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Nalates Urriah

Second Life Outfit Folders

I like the way the new SLV2 Outfits work, somewhat. I have several problems with how the sidebar handles them. There is a work around that I came across in the JIRA that handles my problem with organizing outfits.

Outfits Panel

Problem

The Outfits Sidebar provides only a single list of outfits. This mixes together the outfits I make and the default outfits provided by Linden Lab. As I create more outfits this is going to become more of a problem. So, I want to create folders in the Outfit Panel. But, that is not possible.

There are a number of JIRA feature requests and bug reports about the lack of folders in the Outfits Panel. I’ll get to those later.

Work Around

There is a way to get outfits into folders, sort of. First off, know this is for Series 2 viewers. Don’t mess with your Linden Outfits Folder in Series 1 viewers. Doing so is likely to cause you problems. Also, know you will get different results depending on which version of a Series 2 viewer you use. So, you may need to be flexible.

Inventory Panel

Also, in some of the Development versions of the viewer there are horrible lag problems (its part of the design process I suppose they had additional debug code in them). You have to watch the upper right of the Outfits Panel for the icon that shows updates are in progress. Otherwise, you’ll think the process is broken. You will also find Wear and Replace outfit options grayed out. Once the process completes, everything returns to what you would expect. Just know this outfit changing process can be SLOW.

Open your Inventory Panel. Find the Outfits folder and open it. Now you can create a folder within Outfits. Using the Inventory Panel you can drag and drop outfits into the new folder. This lets you organize outfits into categories, which you can see I have yet to do.

If you go back to the Outfits Panel, there will be no new folder. All the outfits will still be lumped together. Bummer. But, you can wear outfits from Inventory.

This means one uses the Outfits Panel to create and manipulate outfits and the Inventory Panel to organize them and wear them. It is not ideal, but it does provide a way to organize.

Alternate Work Around

It is also possible to name your outfits so they group as you choose in the Outfits Panel. Using a ‘!’ as the first character of an outfit name moves it to the head of the list. Using a ‘~’ moves the item to the end of the list. Other punctuation symbols sort out to different places. Experiment. You can see I had started using sorting to separate my outfits from Linden’s, which feels awkward to me. I have to remember if I used ‘!’ or ‘:” for business dresses or tart dresses.

Getting Things Fixed

As the above is not ideal some people have put requests in the JIRA. Few people have paid much attention to them. So, the Lindens do not have it rated as a high priority. We are likely to get the feature a bit sooner if we jump on the JIRA’s and add ourselves as Watchers. Votes are depreciated.

JIRA VWR-17596 – Folders added to My Outfits in Inventory do not appear in My Appearance-My Outfits. This is one of the JIRA’s and seems the appropriate, but it is a bug fix and as TriloByte points out what we want is more of a feature request.

JIRA VWR-19774 – You cannot group outfits by category by creating folders and dropping outfits into these. This one is also a bug fix request. It is somewhat better worded. Also Nyx Linden has looked at the issue and decided it truly is a bug and not a feature request. Nyx acknowledges this is a highly desired feature.

I can tell you that in the Second Life 2.7.6 (234849) Jul 6 2011 version this has yet to be fixed. Oz Linden has speculated that we will see a 2.8 Beta viewer next week, or may be the week after. It will have some new stuff in it. May be this will be one of the fixes. Whether it is or not, visit the JIRA and click WATCH. You can click Vote too, but WATCH is the important one.

Other Problems

I still find it hard to edit outfits. Adding and removing items from an outfit or updating an outfit seems more painful than necessary.

I thought a nice feature of the old style outfits was being able to choose what parts of an avatar to include in the outfit. So, I could create an outfit without hair. I could then wear any hair and change my outfit without the outfit replacing my hair. It would be nice if I could do that with the new Outfits.

Summary

There are many things yet to be changed in the new style viewers. Plus SLCC is coming soon. We are likely to hear about some of the new things Linden Lab is thinking about has hiding in the wings.

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3 thoughts on “Second Life Outfit Folders”

One trick that helped me (I use the “Alternate Workaround Method” described above) is I created outfits to name a specific category. I use a numbering system, so outfits with 100 are victorian, 200 contemporary, 300 medieval, you get the idea. I started the outfits with “1” – 101, 201, 301. Then I created “blank” outfits (hair, huds, skin, no clothes) and label them ending in “00”. So in my outfit list you see “100 – Victorian” then outfits 101, 102, 103, followed by “200-Contemporary”, followed by 201, 202, 203.

I would love to have subfolders, but in the meantime the above works well for me at least .

I find it helpful to put in the title the colours as well. I may use the name the creator gave the outfit, or a name that makes more sense to me.

Another tip is that I take a picture of me wearing the outfit and drop that into the outfit folder in inventory so I can browse through and have a look at the picture. My memory sucks, and I have a lot of clothing!

I also set up a naked oufit, wearing only eyelashes and AO, things that you want to wear with all outfits. I then wear/replace the outfit, and add the AO & Lashes. If I change AO or lashes, it is easy to update the naked outfit made especially for them. For any new outfit I add, I go completely naked and then add only the outfit items. I visit sims where combat meters are used, and different ones as well. I also put those on alone, completely naked, and with no other attachments such as AO or lashes. I save them as Meter – meter name, and add them as well. If they update or change, then I don’t have to go in and change all my outfits.

I too use a basic ‘nude’ outfit consisting of skin,shape, eyes, lashes, bald, my tats, physics layer, and AO. This nude outfit I made pre-Outfit Panel. It is what I consider the basic me.

I also use a couple of favorites folders for face-lights, nose rings, nails, RP accessories, emotes HUD, and things I commonly wear.

Then I have clothes… within that folder I start dividing things. Dresses, hair, jewelry, shoes, stockings, swim suites, and what ever makes since to me. Dresses are divided into whatever names sense also, mini/short, sexy, long, evening, business, casual, and similar. The same is true for most of the other divisions. A dress with lots of optional stuff may be divided into WEAR and EXTRA. I can click the WEAR folder and add it to my outfit. Then pick and chose from Extras. It makes it easy to get dressed.

I have copies of weapons and combat HUD’s organized by game. Various games use different versions of the same weapon. There are fewer combat meters now, or I know of fewer, so that is not as bad as it once was.

I only save entire outfits I like to the new Outfits Panel. I am finding it is easy to change to a new complete outfit. But, that is not as easy as it once was when when I could specifiy whehter to include ear rings, shoes, and other parts in the outfit. So, I run into the problem of wanting to make partial changes. Also when I want to partially undress there are some complications. So, I find undressing often remains an item by item process.

I don’t do the photos. I think that is too much work. I’m amazed by those that do. Wow. I do keep photos that come with outfits. I’m totally disorganized about keeping and deleting store LM’s that come with clothes and stuff.

I saw that the SL Forum got a new post on using Viewer 2 features to cleanup inventory: Inventory management